@ShenzhenPages
 
#Guangdong reported 36 new locally transmitted confirmed #COVID-19 cases (3 in Guangzhou, 27 in Shenzhen, 2 in Foshan, 4 in Jiangmen), and 18 asymptomatic cases (1 in Guangzhou, 13 in Shenzhen, 1 in Huizhou, 2 in Jiangmen, 1 in Zhanjiang).

US bars 'advanced tech' firms from building China factories for 10 years

US tech companies that receive federal funding will be barred from building "advanced technology" facilities in China for 10 years, the Biden administration has said.
The guidelines were unveiled as part of a $50bn (£43bn) plan aimed at building up the local semiconductor industry.

It comes as business groups have pushed for more government support in an effort to reduce reliance on China.
They are faced with a global microchip shortage which has slowed production.

"We're going to be implementing the guardrails to ensure those who receive CHIPS funds cannot compromise national security... they're not allowed to use this money to invest in China, they can't develop leading-edge technologies in China.... for a period of ten years," according to US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo., explaining the US Chips and Science Act.

"Companies who receive the money can only expand their mature node factories in China to serve the Chinese market."
The US and China are locked in a long-running dispute over trade and technology.

In the absence of travel, the company has encouraged staff in Asia to lead meetings that colleagues in California once led, these people said. The staff also assumed responsibility for the selection of some Asian suppliers of future iPhone parts.
 
The company is now increasingly tapping China to supply high-wage workers to do these jobs, these people said. This year, Apple has posted 50 percent more jobs in China than it did during all of 2020, according to GlobalData, which tracks hiring trends across tech. Many of those new hires are Western-educated Chinese citizens, these people said.
 
The change in the way Apple works has coincided with an increase in the number of Chinese suppliers it uses. A little over a decade ago, China contributed little value to the production of an iPhone. It primarily provided the low-wage workers who assembled the device with components shipped in from the United States, Japan and South Korea. The work accounted for about $6 — or 3.6 percent — of the iPhone’s value, according to a study by Yuqing Xing, an economics professor at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo.
 
Gradually, China nurtured homegrown suppliers that began to displace Apple’s suppliers from around the world. Chinese companies began making speakers, cutting glass, providing batteries and manufacturing camera modules. Its suppliers now account for more than 25 percent of the value of an iPhone, according to Mr. Xing.

I have long had a front-row seat to the CCP’s court intrigue. For 15 years, I was a professor in the Central Party School, where I helped train thousands of high-ranking CCP cadres who staff China’s bureaucracy. During my tenure at the school, I advised the CCP’s top leadership on building the party, and I continued to do so after retiring in 2012. In 2020, after I criticized Xi, I was expelled from the party, stripped of my retirement benefits, and warned that my safety was in danger. I now live in exile in the United States, but I stay in touch with many of my contacts in China.

Xi’s tendency to micromanage also inhibited his response to the pandemic. Instead of leaving the details of policy to the government’s health team, Xi insisted that he himself coordinate China’s efforts. Later, Xi would boast that he “personally commanded, planned the response, oversaw the general situation, acted decisively, and pointed the way forward.” To the extent that this was true, it was not for the better. In fact, his interference led to confusion and inaction, with local health officials receiving mixed messages from Beijing and refusing to act. As I learned from a source on the State Council (China’s chief administrative authority), Premier Li Keqiang proposed activating an emergency-response protocol in early January 2020, but Xi refused to approve it for fear of spoiling the ongoing Chinese New Year celebrations.

When the Omicron variant of the virus surged in Shanghai in February 2022, Xi yet again chose a baffling way to respond. The details of the decision-making process were relayed to me by a contact who works at the State Council. In an online gathering of about 60 pandemic experts held shortly after the outbreak began, everyone agreed that if Shanghai simply followed the latest official guidelines, which relaxed the quarantine requirements, then life in the city could go on more or less as usual. Many of the city’s party and health officials were on board with this approach. But when Xi heard about it, he became furious. Refusing to listen to the experts, he insisted on enforcing his “zero COVID” policy.

On the left are those who remain committed to orthodox Marxism. This faction dominated the party before the Deng era, and it advocates the continuation of class struggle and violent revolution. It includes subfactions named for Mao, Chen Yun (who was the second most powerful official under Deng), Bo Xilai (a former Politburo member who was sidelined and imprisoned before Xi took power), and Xi himself. At the grassroots level, the left also includes a small, politically powerless contingent of Marxist university students, as well as workers who were laid off as a result of Deng’s reforms.

The center consists mainly of Deng’s political descendants. Because most of today’s cadres were trained under him, this is the faction that dominates the CCP bureaucracy. Centrists support full-throated economic reforms and limited political reforms, all with the goal of ensuring the party’s permanent rule. Also in the center is a group descended from two retired top officials, Jiang and Zeng Qinghong (a former vice president), as well as a group called the Youth League Faction, consisting of supporters of former party leader Hu Jintao and the current premier Li.

Last are the subfactions on the right, which in the Chinese context means liberals who advocate a market economy and a softer form of authoritarianism (or even, in some cases, constitutional democracy). This camp, which I belong to, is the least powerful of the three. It includes followers of Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang, party leaders under Deng. It also arguably includes Wen Jiabao, who was China’s premier from 2003 to 2013 and still wields influence.

Xi faces growing opposition from all three factions. The left, while initially supportive of his policies, now thinks he has not gone far enough in reviving Mao’s policies, with some having become disenchanted after he cracked down on the labor movement. The center resents Xi’s undoing of economic reforms. And the right has been completely silenced by Xi’s elimination of even the slightest political debate.

Glimpses of these divides can be seen in the Standing Committee. One member, Han Zheng, is widely perceived as a member of Jiang’s faction. Li in particular seems to diverge from Xi, and a row between the officials is breaking out into public view. Li has long quietly opposed Xi’s zero-COVID policy, stressing the need to reopen businesses and protect the economy. In May, after Li told 100,000 party cadres at an online conference that the economy was in worse shape than expected, Xi’s allies launched a counterattack. In Xinhua, they defended him by arguing, “China’s economic development prospects will definitely be brighter.” As a symbol of their resistance to Xi’s COVID policy, Li and his entourage refuse to wear masks. In April, during a speech in the city of Nanchang, Li’s aides could be seen asking attendees to remove their masks. So far, Li has taken Xi’s imperiousness sitting down, always acquiescing out of necessity. But he may soon reach a breaking point.

During the Shanghai lockdown, however, resistance became more overt. On social media, local officials openly criticized the zero-COVID policy. In April, members of the residents’ committee of Sanlin Town, a neighborhood in Shanghai, collectively resigned, complaining in an open letter that they had been sealed in their offices for 24 days with no access to their families.

An early note of dissent came in February 2020, when the real estate tycoon Ren Zhiqiang called him a “clown” for bungling the response to the pandemic. (After a one-day trial, Ren was sentenced to 18 years in prison.) Chinese social media platforms are awash in videos in which ordinary people beg Xi to end his zero-COVID policy. In May, a group calling itself the “Shanghai Self-Saving Autonomous Committee” released a manifesto online titled, “Don’t be a slave—save yourself.” The document called on the city’s residents to fight the lockdown and form self-governing bodies to help one another. On social media, some Chinese have sarcastically proposed that the most effective plan for fighting the pandemic would be to convene the 20th National Congress as soon as possible to prevent Xi from staying in power.

The only viable way of changing course, so far as I can see, is also the scariest and deadliest: a humiliating defeat in a war. If Xi were to attack Taiwan, his likeliest target, there is a good chance that the war would not go as planned, and Taiwan, with American help, would be able to resist invasion and inflict grave damage on mainland China. In that event, the elites and the masses would abandon Xi, paving the way for not only his personal downfall but perhaps even the collapse of the CCP as we know it.

@softwarnet
 
Prime Minister Kishida stated that he will not attend the 50th anniversary of the normalization of diplomatic relations between Japan and China

@afpfr
 
Des parlementaires français sont arrivés mercredi à Taïwan, devenant la plus importante délégation européenne à se rendre à Taipei depuis les importantes manoeuvres militaires chinoises, en août, autour de l'île #AFP

@Saturnax1
#JMSDF #JapanCoastGuard #Navy 08/15/2012 - Two Japan Coast Guard vessels JCG Muzuki (PS-11) & JCG Nobaru (PS-16) ramming a Chinese boat piloted by activists who had placed a Chinese flag on Uotsuri Island.